This invention relates to applique machines and has particular reference to machines for applying or appliquing decorative articles to a material, either separately or in combination with an embroidering and/or stitching action.
One particular group of machines for embroidery work generally comprises a frame supporting an area of material or fabric to be embroided or decorated in a plane, a needle support bar supporting a row of regularly spaced needles along the bar, each needle comprising an assembly capable of effecting a stitching operation in a plane substantially perpendicular to the plane of the material or fabric to be decorated, means for enabling a selected number of said needles to make a stitch in said material, means for moving the material or fabric relative to the needle bar to obtain a desired stitching or embroidery pattern and control means controlling said moving means and enabling and disenabling selected needles in order to obtain a desired stitch pattern.
Needles in such a machine may be enabled or disenabled by simply mounting or removing the needles as the case may be. In more modern machines, needles are enabled and disenabled under electronic control.
Machines of this general type are well known and have been in use in the textile industry for many years. In the embroidery or decoration of large amounts of fabric, a typical machine may have a length of fabric supported in a frame some 10, 15 or 20 yards long and the bank of needles extending across the frame may include as many as 100 or more needles typically 680, 1020 or 1360 respectively given the smallest repeat of pattern. In order to obtain changes of color and/or repeat in such machines, the changes may be effected as follows:
A change of repeat means the withdrawal of every second, second and third, second, third and fourth needle and so on, leaving needles 1--3--5, or 1--4--7, or 1--5--9 in operation. This can be done manually or mechanically, normally leaving only one color of threads in the needles.
A change of colors requires two or three (or any number of) needles side by side, threaded with the same sequence of colors. This means, however, that in the smallest repeat only one color is available, that the use of two colors requires duplication of the repeat, and three colours will push the repeat up to the use of every fourth needle only. However, technically bigger repeats may very well be threaded like this: Needles 1,2,3--5,6,7--9,10,11 etc. to be repeated over the length of the machine. Selection of needles 1--5--9, or 2--6--10 will correspondingly change the color used within the given repeat.
Means for selectively enabling and disenabling needles is very well known and reference in this connection is made to U.S. Pat. No. 3,709,172 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,872,812 as being typical of many examples in this field.
In more recent years there has been a demand for decorative materials of a different nature in which articles are applied and stitched to the fabric.
Applique work such as this has also been effected on machines of the type described above, such machines generally being modified by the provision of a plurality of feeder module devices for supplying articles sequentially to each needle position when required and aligning each article with a needle axis to enable the appliquing step to take place. See, for example, British Patent Specification No. 1093300 and U.S. Pat. No. 1,107,593.
The prior art has, therefore, been very much concerned with the provision firstly of color changes in the embroidery and secondly, the supply of articles, such, for example, as sequins to be applied to the fabric either as a sole decoration or in addition to embroidery. Applique machinery comprises as described above, a large number of needles with a feeder device firmly and fixedly associated with each needle position thus making color changes, apart from manual changes of thread through several hundred needles, virtually impossible. The feeder devices are firmly screwed to the machine in opposition to the needles, while the tine-wheels were mounted on an axle stretching over the length of the machine. Machines of this type, therefore, will hereinafter be referred to as "machines of the kind described".
The disadvantages of these prior art machines are that the presence of the feeder module array in close juxtaposition to the needle (usually over the top) means that access to the needles themeselves is restricted and that observation of the needle performance is also restricted.
Any change in color of the articles being supplied by a feeder module is difficult and time consuming to effect. The changeover involves removal of the existing supply tape of articles and substitution with a supply tape of different color or different nature of article.
Thus, effectively, such machines are limited to one color combination with a given needle only and it makes multi-colors applique work very slow, and even if if there is a sufficient combination of colors with needle threads across the bank of needles, the production of a pattern with a plurality of differently colored appliqueing material is still very slow and results in multiple changes of the decorative material with respect to the needle bank between stitching operations.
With increasing sophistication of the clothing market there is an increasing demand for machines which can provide multi-color embroidery work and at the same time multi-colors applique work with different colours of articles to be appliqued being supplied to each selected needle position.